The conclusion that we are all assholes is never a more cogent argument then when one makes it in an airport.
Chivalry, is dead. The grammar on that last sentence is inherently flawed, but when ever someone say that phrase, they inevitably pause after the word “chivalry,” as if to provide the listener a moment to think to themselves “hmm, common courtesy by men is…”
I don’t think there is a more popular phrase by semi-intellectual writers that paradoxical. Other than being a pair of dox, a paradox is, by definition, something that exists although it shouldn’t. It’s existence is somehow impossible, because whatever is happening it not supposed to be, or the answer to a question is in contradiction to the question itself. Catch-22 is so much of a paradox it has become shorthand for anything of the quality of paradoxical.
Last night, I flew home first class. It was only my second time. The first time I was 15, and it was because the airline messed up me and my friends seats. We sat in first class and lived the life up by ourselves. Last night, I knew I was going to fly first class, and it’s was a world of difference than the first time. The first time was a surprise, and it was more akin to winning the lottery or winning at gambling. You are not supposed to get the better treatment, but somehow you do. Last night was different because the anticipation was there. I was leaving home (Indiana) and going home (LA) and I knew the minute I stepped in the terminal, I was going to have it easier than everyone else.
Penny Lane and Jerry Seinfeld said two great statements about First Class.
Jerry: Have you ever flown first class?
Elaine: No.
Jerry: Ok. Then I am taking first class. I have been there. I can’t go back.
Penny Lane: Famous people are just more interesting.
Jerry’s plea can’t be logically outwitted by Elaine. She clearly does not know the upside. Penny’s view, like Jerry’s, is taken from a different point because they know the downside.
Jerry meets a jeans (!)* model in first class, and has the time of his life on the flight. He eats Sundaes, he drinks fine spirits, he has a fantastic trip. When the steward asks: “Would you like more of anything,” his response is, “More everything.”
*If you were to ask any man, and to press them, Jeans model would probably rank higher than Lingerie for the simple fact that they looked great without the help of sexy underwear. Underwear helps present a fantasy, Jeans are either made or broken by the women wearing. Men still talk about Kim Smith, Claudia Schiffer, Niki Taylor and Victoria Silvstedt.
Interestingly enough, one of Penny’s main characteristics is that she often performs the Stewardess rant at random. The whole “fasten your seatbelts, tray tables and seatbacks” speech. And tellingly so, her personal goal is to fly to Morocco and live a different kind of life for a while. The key words in her life goal are: Fly, and for a while. Her character arc in the movie is to be beautiful, to be attached to the lead guitarist (Billy Crudup, the guy who brings you the priceless MasterCard commercials), and to be unattainable for the common man in the protagonist.
Penny Lane is fueled by her desire to be first class. She doesn’t want to be a groupie. She calls herself something else. She is there for the lifestyle, not for the glory, i.e. she wants to be part of it; with the band, she is ostensible, not obsessed. She knows the flight crews speech not out of repeated memory, but because she wants to remember what the perks of the good life are, and so she can recreate it for others and create it for herself. She is the ultimate stereotype of the American woman at her worst; someone who uses her sexual guile to move up in the world (and her final reveal is the tell of her base intentions). Yet, we as a people do not fault her for this. In fact, we understand her, as we all want to be part of the bigger, grander life. The fact that she is endlessly charming no doubt clouds our vision, but in truth her earnestness is redeeming.
In a commerce society, we all want to move up. It’s statistically proven to us (in inherently flawed rhetoric) that success is a good thing. And while Gordon Gekko will tell us that greed is good, it’s a half truth, which only tells us the parts we want or don’t want to hear.
The secret is that the people in first class are, in most definitions of the word, better. They tell better stories. They have been all over the world. They can preach to you philosophy of the uncommon existence, letting you know about facets of life that we are rarely available to.
While Donald Trump, George Bush, Paris Hilton, and Sean Combs represent everything wrong with the upper class, they are part of a incorrect media represented facsimile of the rich. These people are not everyday rich; we just are made to think they are. What they are, in actuality, are members of a super elite, showing America they glory of wealth, but not the greatness. While Donald Trump’s success may seem that he is a financial genius, I have little doubt that he is no more than a man with a 115 IQ (and let me note here that James Joyce died extremely poor), these people on a whole are so far off of the indistinguishable quality of many of the rich that many of us fall into a despise/envy of the rich instead of trying to emulate them.
The rich that do not appear on TV outside of reality shows have actually made it. They took a path and struggled their asses off to get there. They studied, and then they worked, and then they struggled to prove themselves. Conrad Hilton is far more interesting of a person Paris, yet his life is common enough to the American Dream success story that we do not want to watch it. Even with reality doctor shows, we do not see how creative and spectacularly genius many of those who have made are. We are given vain bastards like the Docs of “Dr. 90210,” or the money grubbing lawyers of CourTV. We are forced to see these people at their working form, filled with ambition, focused on the job, and for an end result. The end result we do not see is their quality of their life (outside of the cars and bling), which is full of dinners which feature discourse of the minute satisfaction of wines, the literature of Russia, and their views of socioeconomic trends in respect to a fast food nation.
Somehow, we have villianized the wealthy for what they have instead of what they are. These people are extremely well educated. They have been given masses of information that they have to recall on everyday. In every way, shape, and form, these people are more than what the common man is. Not because they were born that way, or because they are at their endpoint of success, but because they took the tremendous effort to get there. Bluntly put, (famous or not) these people are more interesting. They have respectably earned it.
Most people see first class as a tremendous privilege, so much so on the privilege aspect that they see it as a slap in the face, that these people would pay x amount of dollars more not to have to board in sequence, or to be fed the food of the commoner. The cold of this is that it’s a benefit of being well off. While many people of every ilk do not fly first class, and they can be wonderful single serving friends, the odds of you sitting next to someone interesting vs. someone abhorring is 90/10.
But the abhorring part, while true, is actually a skewed figure, because there is a difference between all those who fly first class and those who fly coach. One is buying into the service industry; one is buying a ticket to the transportation business.
While the people in the first class may have a higher likelihood of being more interesting to talk intermittently with on a flight, this is not a rule or a guarantee (you could wind up sitting next to Rich son #3, which would be paralyzingly boring). Where they are coming from is not the issue. It’s that the people in first class feel pampered, and therefore feel special and comfortable. The people in coach feel cramped, shuffled, and viewed as a part of the bottom line. One is pulled, the other pushed.
While I have had a couple of wonderful experiences in coach (New Years 2003), I have had many more rotten times, simply because the person next to you is uncomfortable, limited in space, and not given free booze to lighten up. It is here when we become our worst. Our only goals are armrest space, domination of the space below the seats and in the overhead, and getting away from the crying baby. We resort to dogs, marking space and barking scare tactics for territory.
No one wants to be marginalized, particularly when we have no control of a safe arrival. We all hate airline travel on some level of another because we all know that if we die in a plane crash, our only fault was buying a ticket. Everyone would rather be the dumper instead of a dumpee in a relationship, because they know they ended it. Flying in an airplane automatically subjugates us to the role of the helpless. Even if one doesn’t realize this may be your last hours on a conscious level, they act as such on a primeval level, because one dies, they at least want to die in power of some facet of control. Human instinct on an airplane is to lower everyone else in your row to your lowest level of existence, so that they die on your terms. And so people bicker. They take the peanut packets of those asleep. They take the limited blankets and pillows for themselves in case.
Any case that humanity deserves to be saved is a fallacy because the proof that all humans are created equal is defied by comfortable impulse on a constricted place on a 3 hour flight.
But the worst theater of airline travel is the denouement. When everyone finally gets off the vehicle that defied the odds in surviving, they have to go to a mass structure to get their belongings. The baggage claim is a retched experience on many levels, from smell of passengers who have been in confined and usually too hot area for too long, to smokers waiting for a fix, to coordinating the ride home concurrent with your readiness. Everyone fights for the spots next to the claim. They want to be right next to the belt, ready for the rare chance that their baggage will be among the first released by the mechanism. People never move from these spots. They will stay 30 minutes or longer, simply because they HAVE to be there. No matter that they could simply and politely ask their way to the front of the line when time comes, they fear the worst and stake claim for their luggage at the forefront of the madness.
Men and women will use their children to fill their spot in the queue. They will place piece 1 of their luggage in your way to wait for pieces 2, 3, 4, and 5 of their cargo entourage.
And in most cases, the timeframe is unlimited. Almost no one is in dire need to get out of the airport and to a car. Anyone who makes their plans on the timeframe of a airline flight is kidding themselves. They simply are driven by a base desire to get the hell out of the mass of people.
One could argue that men should always step aside, and let the more delicate gender take their time to get their belongings. Men surely have no greater rush on a whole than anyone else, but yet, there we are using carts to block people on the incoming side of belt.
Chivalry, is dead. Not because of a lack of class or manners, because it certainly is a distinction driven in the means of wealth. It’s gone because we all know that when push comes to pushing for a better spot in the hope that our luggage will be before yours, we don’t care who or what you are.
And yet, people rarely remark on the wonder that we can go from our homes to ends of the world in less than a day. And yet, in this near magical result of technology, we cannot stop from being enormous assholes to one another because of limited space and control. We seem to overlook the fact that average Americans can take the transport of people immensely wealthier than the common man.
We as people who fly on airplanes are completely displeased with the ability to see loved ones thousands of miles away.
We are now in an age of TV’s in headrests, thousand dollar sound systems, and Turkish cotton floormats in cars, I think this is because we are finally at a point where we have gotten to the point where nothing short of instantaneous teleportation will be satisfactory.
The vastness of the world is available to us within a mere day, yet we bitch about the journey. We are all tremendously spoiled. And when anyone of any salt looks at this, it doesn’t make sense. This is something that is a near miracle in and of itself. And yet, we as humans can’t stand it.
Maybe it’s why love in humans is doomed to fail. When we can convince ourselves to removes joy from privilege, that has to be something that exists against itself. This is not how it’s supposed to be.
I don’t think there is a more popular phrase by semi-intellectual writers that paradoxical. Other than being a pair of dox, a paradox is, by definition, something that exists although it shouldn’t. It’s existence is somehow impossible, because whatever is happening it not supposed to be, or the answer to a question is in contradiction to the question itself. Catch-22 is so much of a paradox it has become shorthand for anything of the quality of paradoxical.
Last night, I flew home first class. It was only my second time. The first time I was 15, and it was because the airline messed up me and my friends seats. We sat in first class and lived the life up by ourselves. Last night, I knew I was going to fly first class, and it’s was a world of difference than the first time. The first time was a surprise, and it was more akin to winning the lottery or winning at gambling. You are not supposed to get the better treatment, but somehow you do. Last night was different because the anticipation was there. I was leaving home (Indiana) and going home (LA) and I knew the minute I stepped in the terminal, I was going to have it easier than everyone else.
Penny Lane and Jerry Seinfeld said two great statements about First Class.
Jerry: Have you ever flown first class?
Elaine: No.
Jerry: Ok. Then I am taking first class. I have been there. I can’t go back.
Penny Lane: Famous people are just more interesting.
Jerry’s plea can’t be logically outwitted by Elaine. She clearly does not know the upside. Penny’s view, like Jerry’s, is taken from a different point because they know the downside.
Jerry meets a jeans (!)* model in first class, and has the time of his life on the flight. He eats Sundaes, he drinks fine spirits, he has a fantastic trip. When the steward asks: “Would you like more of anything,” his response is, “More everything.”
*If you were to ask any man, and to press them, Jeans model would probably rank higher than Lingerie for the simple fact that they looked great without the help of sexy underwear. Underwear helps present a fantasy, Jeans are either made or broken by the women wearing. Men still talk about Kim Smith, Claudia Schiffer, Niki Taylor and Victoria Silvstedt.
Interestingly enough, one of Penny’s main characteristics is that she often performs the Stewardess rant at random. The whole “fasten your seatbelts, tray tables and seatbacks” speech. And tellingly so, her personal goal is to fly to Morocco and live a different kind of life for a while. The key words in her life goal are: Fly, and for a while. Her character arc in the movie is to be beautiful, to be attached to the lead guitarist (Billy Crudup, the guy who brings you the priceless MasterCard commercials), and to be unattainable for the common man in the protagonist.
Penny Lane is fueled by her desire to be first class. She doesn’t want to be a groupie. She calls herself something else. She is there for the lifestyle, not for the glory, i.e. she wants to be part of it; with the band, she is ostensible, not obsessed. She knows the flight crews speech not out of repeated memory, but because she wants to remember what the perks of the good life are, and so she can recreate it for others and create it for herself. She is the ultimate stereotype of the American woman at her worst; someone who uses her sexual guile to move up in the world (and her final reveal is the tell of her base intentions). Yet, we as a people do not fault her for this. In fact, we understand her, as we all want to be part of the bigger, grander life. The fact that she is endlessly charming no doubt clouds our vision, but in truth her earnestness is redeeming.
In a commerce society, we all want to move up. It’s statistically proven to us (in inherently flawed rhetoric) that success is a good thing. And while Gordon Gekko will tell us that greed is good, it’s a half truth, which only tells us the parts we want or don’t want to hear.
The secret is that the people in first class are, in most definitions of the word, better. They tell better stories. They have been all over the world. They can preach to you philosophy of the uncommon existence, letting you know about facets of life that we are rarely available to.
While Donald Trump, George Bush, Paris Hilton, and Sean Combs represent everything wrong with the upper class, they are part of a incorrect media represented facsimile of the rich. These people are not everyday rich; we just are made to think they are. What they are, in actuality, are members of a super elite, showing America they glory of wealth, but not the greatness. While Donald Trump’s success may seem that he is a financial genius, I have little doubt that he is no more than a man with a 115 IQ (and let me note here that James Joyce died extremely poor), these people on a whole are so far off of the indistinguishable quality of many of the rich that many of us fall into a despise/envy of the rich instead of trying to emulate them.
The rich that do not appear on TV outside of reality shows have actually made it. They took a path and struggled their asses off to get there. They studied, and then they worked, and then they struggled to prove themselves. Conrad Hilton is far more interesting of a person Paris, yet his life is common enough to the American Dream success story that we do not want to watch it. Even with reality doctor shows, we do not see how creative and spectacularly genius many of those who have made are. We are given vain bastards like the Docs of “Dr. 90210,” or the money grubbing lawyers of CourTV. We are forced to see these people at their working form, filled with ambition, focused on the job, and for an end result. The end result we do not see is their quality of their life (outside of the cars and bling), which is full of dinners which feature discourse of the minute satisfaction of wines, the literature of Russia, and their views of socioeconomic trends in respect to a fast food nation.
Somehow, we have villianized the wealthy for what they have instead of what they are. These people are extremely well educated. They have been given masses of information that they have to recall on everyday. In every way, shape, and form, these people are more than what the common man is. Not because they were born that way, or because they are at their endpoint of success, but because they took the tremendous effort to get there. Bluntly put, (famous or not) these people are more interesting. They have respectably earned it.
Most people see first class as a tremendous privilege, so much so on the privilege aspect that they see it as a slap in the face, that these people would pay x amount of dollars more not to have to board in sequence, or to be fed the food of the commoner. The cold of this is that it’s a benefit of being well off. While many people of every ilk do not fly first class, and they can be wonderful single serving friends, the odds of you sitting next to someone interesting vs. someone abhorring is 90/10.
But the abhorring part, while true, is actually a skewed figure, because there is a difference between all those who fly first class and those who fly coach. One is buying into the service industry; one is buying a ticket to the transportation business.
While the people in the first class may have a higher likelihood of being more interesting to talk intermittently with on a flight, this is not a rule or a guarantee (you could wind up sitting next to Rich son #3, which would be paralyzingly boring). Where they are coming from is not the issue. It’s that the people in first class feel pampered, and therefore feel special and comfortable. The people in coach feel cramped, shuffled, and viewed as a part of the bottom line. One is pulled, the other pushed.
While I have had a couple of wonderful experiences in coach (New Years 2003), I have had many more rotten times, simply because the person next to you is uncomfortable, limited in space, and not given free booze to lighten up. It is here when we become our worst. Our only goals are armrest space, domination of the space below the seats and in the overhead, and getting away from the crying baby. We resort to dogs, marking space and barking scare tactics for territory.
No one wants to be marginalized, particularly when we have no control of a safe arrival. We all hate airline travel on some level of another because we all know that if we die in a plane crash, our only fault was buying a ticket. Everyone would rather be the dumper instead of a dumpee in a relationship, because they know they ended it. Flying in an airplane automatically subjugates us to the role of the helpless. Even if one doesn’t realize this may be your last hours on a conscious level, they act as such on a primeval level, because one dies, they at least want to die in power of some facet of control. Human instinct on an airplane is to lower everyone else in your row to your lowest level of existence, so that they die on your terms. And so people bicker. They take the peanut packets of those asleep. They take the limited blankets and pillows for themselves in case.
Any case that humanity deserves to be saved is a fallacy because the proof that all humans are created equal is defied by comfortable impulse on a constricted place on a 3 hour flight.
But the worst theater of airline travel is the denouement. When everyone finally gets off the vehicle that defied the odds in surviving, they have to go to a mass structure to get their belongings. The baggage claim is a retched experience on many levels, from smell of passengers who have been in confined and usually too hot area for too long, to smokers waiting for a fix, to coordinating the ride home concurrent with your readiness. Everyone fights for the spots next to the claim. They want to be right next to the belt, ready for the rare chance that their baggage will be among the first released by the mechanism. People never move from these spots. They will stay 30 minutes or longer, simply because they HAVE to be there. No matter that they could simply and politely ask their way to the front of the line when time comes, they fear the worst and stake claim for their luggage at the forefront of the madness.
Men and women will use their children to fill their spot in the queue. They will place piece 1 of their luggage in your way to wait for pieces 2, 3, 4, and 5 of their cargo entourage.
And in most cases, the timeframe is unlimited. Almost no one is in dire need to get out of the airport and to a car. Anyone who makes their plans on the timeframe of a airline flight is kidding themselves. They simply are driven by a base desire to get the hell out of the mass of people.
One could argue that men should always step aside, and let the more delicate gender take their time to get their belongings. Men surely have no greater rush on a whole than anyone else, but yet, there we are using carts to block people on the incoming side of belt.
Chivalry, is dead. Not because of a lack of class or manners, because it certainly is a distinction driven in the means of wealth. It’s gone because we all know that when push comes to pushing for a better spot in the hope that our luggage will be before yours, we don’t care who or what you are.
And yet, people rarely remark on the wonder that we can go from our homes to ends of the world in less than a day. And yet, in this near magical result of technology, we cannot stop from being enormous assholes to one another because of limited space and control. We seem to overlook the fact that average Americans can take the transport of people immensely wealthier than the common man.
We as people who fly on airplanes are completely displeased with the ability to see loved ones thousands of miles away.
We are now in an age of TV’s in headrests, thousand dollar sound systems, and Turkish cotton floormats in cars, I think this is because we are finally at a point where we have gotten to the point where nothing short of instantaneous teleportation will be satisfactory.
The vastness of the world is available to us within a mere day, yet we bitch about the journey. We are all tremendously spoiled. And when anyone of any salt looks at this, it doesn’t make sense. This is something that is a near miracle in and of itself. And yet, we as humans can’t stand it.
Maybe it’s why love in humans is doomed to fail. When we can convince ourselves to removes joy from privilege, that has to be something that exists against itself. This is not how it’s supposed to be.
posted by Indiana at
12:36 AM
3 Comments:
A) In all of this muck, you never qualify your stay in first class... other than to imply that you're better than the people who don't need 1.5 ounce bottles of booze and who don't see an armrest as necessary terrority to conquer. What amazing feat did you do to get bumped up? Other than the feat of being your father's son...
First class is, in general, the scum of the earth. Globetrotting, name-dropping stories of one-upmanship and sycophancy shit out of one asshole's mouth into the ears of another... First class is just as much a garrish show of west egger wealth as it is a matter of comfort... It's, at best, a luxury of the credit card faux rich - the people who wear rolexes just so people can ask if the watch is real, and the people who throw $10k 28 inch rims on the the car that they're leasing, but can't feed their own family. People who work for their money are less likely to throw it away on these, the most ephemeral luxuries - and it's been my experience that this ruling class of the front of the plane is 10 times more likely to be the shit-headed progeny of someone who worked for their money than the actual breadwinner.
The most genius people i know are consistently the most modest. They have the ability to truly experience life without making the car they drive or their seat on a plane a visceral experience.
First Class is an invention of the shadiest side of capitalism - the necessity to separate ones self from the common man at any expense... Life was easier for the wealthy when the poor and the minorities of the world were not able to fly, much less drive cars. But with accessibility comes the necessity to put more gates and doors between you (the haves) and the common man... First class may also be the most selfish act imaginable! Designed specifically to place you in your own little world, far away from the untermench, it is the antithesis of life's other extravagances - unlike sharing a meal or going to a concert or going to a museum with a friend or loved one, First Class is the capitalist's best attempt at buddhist meditation, only in the the most greedy way, it's about surrounding yourself with physical distractions rather than ridding yourself of them. Not so long ago, flying on an airplane was as lofty a dream as flying to the moon - it was something that men dreamed of one day doing. But as the technology progressed and was opened to the common man, the privileged needed to place a new barrier betwix themselves and the proletariat - hence first class. But for all the extra leg room and free booze, it's really just a psychosomatic luxury. Johnny Economy flies to get somewhere - he's rewarded by the smiling face he sees when he lands, or more romantically with the feat of flight... The ability to get from one place to another very efficiently. The most rewarding feature of first class is knowing that you paid twice as much, so it must be twice as good... right?
Coming to the defense of the wealthy does not make you one of them. And knowing that a first class ticket between indiana and los angeles costs more than your entire month of rent - rent that you and I consistently struggle to pay - I ask again, what did you do to deserve first class?
By
Anonymous, at July 14, 2005 5:05 AM
Well done He said, She Said. What was said, can't be topped, so I shall simply agree with a phrase far more advanced and complex than it first appears.
Fucking A.
By
Anonymous, at July 16, 2005 3:36 PM
So, since my last post was met by some intense hatred and shock by some of the readers of this site, I’ll take a step aside.
The whole point about people who are in first class telling better stories was not a knock on the people in the lower class. And while I provided a disclaimer about the fact that there are both terrible people who are rich and uninteresting people as well, there is a difference that still exists.
My co-contributor called it a false sense of Buddhism which I took personal as I consider myself Buddhist. To be fair I only let it come to me, and the free meal found me, I did not need to desire for anything, it came in turn.
Money drives most anything. In one form or another, from sexual drive in women to men, to men vs. men power, to women vs. women female regard, to everything else. The greatest upside of money is not the ability to be lavish, but to not have to worry the same things you used to. It lets you not worry about rent or groceries. It lets you eat at restaurants or go to bars more often. It doesn’t let you live a better life, it just helps.
And let me make this clear, I despise the nature of most ideal rich culture. Chris Rock talked about black people who are rich vs. white people who are rich, and he mentioned the ideal that most rich black people are not wealthy. Wealth continues, richness doesn’t. His focus was on the fact that most black people who get wealth immediately focus on material goods. This is not true of one ethnicity, but anyone who comes into money. While one group may spend new found wealth on cars and rims, another spends it on expensive meals, others on all other forms of impracticality. These are the ones who show off, these are the ones that are all right to despise. Living beyond your means is a great testament to a weak character.
The ones I was talking about were the patient rich. Those, who while containing the old self before they were wealthy. The self-made, the studious, the hard working. Most of these people are just like most people, they can simply afford some of the more creature comforts. These were the old friends of yours who were great at their jobs or went to school for 7 years longer than you did.
I was angered at many parts of my co-contributor’s rants. First, as being someone so obsessed with celebrity culture and fame as he is, for him to chastise people for being name droppers is ludicrous, as he is a name dropper (if merely by meeting them, I hear it and while he never does it to impress people {save women in bars, but who wouldn’t}, and would only call upon a name in a job interview for job furthering, not for awe inspiring hem of the gods ideal) and wants to be part of a higher culture. This to me is a compliment, not an insult, because he desires to be known, like I and all other struggling artists do. Our fame is based not just on quality, but on legacy, wanting people to know what you did.
The whole rant about first class being the worst scum of the earth is something so far from the left I didn’t even think he had it in him. Not only did I talk about the miracle of it all when it comes to flight, but the whole extreme leftist thing concerning separated class is so Marxist it’s ridiculous. Division is part of life, and to knock people for making there own choice when presented is a failing cause, especially since its not a matter of path, but a matter of comfort. Is it inherently ridiculous to have a first class in the first place? Of course. But it is there. And I can promise you, if you have the money to go one way to first or business class, you will not think twice. We are not communists, and it could be said that the fact that we have fist class is a testament to why we never went that far red, but that’s the bottom line in living in a commerce. We pretend we are all about equality, but we are really about money.
I regret some of what I wrote, mainly to create the impression that there is greatness in privilege and those blessed with it, though I tried not to. I wanted to say, that if given the option between sitting next to a crying kid or a member of an 80’s band or a person who hates you because you have the window seat is an easy choice. Some people tell better stories. They may not be in first class, but the odds are much better that they are.
It is not the rich that are better, but those who actually try to better themselves in life that are. Being rich may make things easier, but it also makes being a bad person easier. It’s much harder to succumb to temptation when you have a decent life, with the exception of the Amish, the affluent have as strong of a sense of morals as anyone, simply because they can afford to stand by their beliefs.
Am I arguing for the wealthy. Yes and no. But mostly no. I am arguing for the educated and those who people who actually can stop and smell the roses. The whole thing was not a derision on those below, or an appreciation of those who are above the easy life. It was a statement that we all need to realize that working for something better has its benefits, and that we will all be better if we don’t settle. Compromising for the easy dollar is a flaw all of us have. Most everyone we admire has some level of success. It may not be in wealth, or in quality of life. It’s not about getting first class, or meeting famous people. What I was writing about was a matter of wanting to care, and it’s too often lost in the mess of having a career in the middle.
We have a world filled with ambition and poisoning the water to get ahead. Too many of those people ruin what it is to be successful because they only want the show of being rich, not the ability to live in a world without fear. Poverty is necessity, and it’s the reason why most people rise to the higher levels.
We need to all focus on not worrying about the little things, and we will all be better off. Those with money have that ability. It’s unfair that they are the only ones, but that’s the hard fact, they do and we don’t. I said my view, but I don’t see a real solution other than then everyone coming into money. But to be great one has to have the struggle, and most of the people I have met in first class have gone through the struggle.
I wrote it because I think we need to care about not settling for what is. There is no reason why we shouldn’t stop working for the top.
It’s a hard argument, but I still stand by it. Isn't all we are trying for is comfort and knowledge?
By
Indiana, at July 20, 2005 8:43 PM
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